Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Adios, Well You Know The Rest

With a filibuster going on in the Senate and no calendar today for the House this special session is dead. The Red State has a post about, The reason why there won't be a 3rd Special Session. I think that's a good call. If Perry called another one now he might even get Republicans to start speaking out against him.

A key impasse is over the election date for school boards. The speaker believes that teachers’ groups dominate the low turnout school board elections in the spring and wants to have the elections in November when the GOP turnout machine is in full throttle. Critics, including many GOP legislators counter that slate cards, combined with lever-pulling Republicans, will simply replace current school boards elected by people who care enough about education to vote in the spring with evangelicals and right wing ideologues.

Well, according to the Texas Conservative Coalition, the typical November voter is an above median income white, with no kids at home or in school.

Another impasse. Under Robin Hood, a little more than three dozen wealthy school districts like Eanes and Highland Park in Dallas are shipping hundreds of millions of their taxpayers’ dollars to poorer school districts. Craddick is adamant that caps be placed on the amount of money those wealthy schools are required to export. While it may not be fair to the wealthy school district taxpayers to ship out so many dollars, it is also not a coincidence that those school districts are home to some of the Republican party's most prolific contributors.

A third impasse. Just about every legislator and most of the public want to see a real teacher pay raise. But like many Republican insiders, Craddick believes that the Supreme Court ruling due in the next few months will cost the state at least a couple of billion dollars. And he may be right. Rather than do a teacher pay raise, he wants to hold back those dollars to pay for likely court requirements.